Radar wrote:How many days are you up for? If you want to help out on the Museum (they want people to be there an talk about the systems, keep them running etc.) just let me know and I'll sort out the tickets.

I'm just up in Auckland from very late Friday night (2230 arrive), there for the weekend, and leave Monday afternoon (1400). It will be a full on weekend, but I'm keen to help out in anyway. I will try see if work (school) will pay towards the costs seeing I'm keen to look at the game dev, 3D printing, phone/device movie making and robotics which have a strong educational value. After several years working I'm due some kind of professional development.

> Personally I'm keen to also have some hands-on time with the Oculus Rift (which will be display) as I've always been a fan/collector of older VR / 3D tech.Do you have much VR gear? I had a VFX1 Virtual Reality Headgear just arrive the other week ( https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/1006 ... 1924263345 )

It would be great to see the older VR tech on show. I reckon there would be as much interest for people to try an original one and then the new Oculus Rift just for comparison and to really put the newer technology into context. I think I'll watch The Lawnmower Man again before the next weekend. I see it's up on youtube.

There's a JCMatthew digital photo frame on trademe I'll probably buy this weekend. It seems it plays some video and sound. I thought of loading that up as C64 jukebox or some youtube 8-bit games and demos and even some RetroweMuseum photos and bringing that up just in case to show people.

These ideas are too late for the expo, but to help connect the present to the gaming past I would showcase games that were current franchise titles (such as Street Fighter), or well-known arcade machines (R-Type) that had Nintendo/Sega console versions to capture the interest of the next-gen of gamers that came along and will be in force at such an expo. Also, since so much stuff is being done currently around hacking and prodding the old 8-bit computers, many people that left these computers in the 80s would be quite surprised to see how much has been squeezed out of the machines and the creative talents of people in the retro scene.

I wonder if the event has free wireless??? That would be a big must have for such an event, and an easy sponsor to find, but somehow think there might not be any (I'll have to check the website a bit closer)

YetiSeti wrote:I'm just up in Auckland from very late Friday night (2230 arrive), there for the weekend, and leave Monday afternoon (1400). It will be a full on weekend, but I'm keen to help out in anyway. I will try see if work (school) will pay towards the costs seeing I'm keen to look at the game dev, 3D printing, phone/device movie making and robotics which have a strong educational value. After several years working I'm due some kind of professional development.I wonder if the event has free wireless??? That would be a big must have for such an event, and an easy sponsor to find, but somehow think there might not be any (I'll have to check the website a bit closer)

I'll be manning the Museum section pretty much all weekend so your welcome to spend as much time there as you like. Event looks to be quite education focused, interesting mix of hands-on and some really good speakers. Media Design School are heavily involved.

Not sure on Wireless yet!

Thanks for the feedback around things to display. I'm trying to get as many different systems on display as the first focus, second on getting as many of them running as possible (limit is screens & power) and thirdly on displaying "interesting" games. Definitely trying to get systems and games with interesting features / control schemes etc. Intellivision with Intellivoice (+ speech games), Colecovision and full set of expansions (sans ADAM), Sega MD + 32x + SegaCD working setup, Master System with 3D Glasses & Lightgun etc. NES + R.O.B Robot.Its taking a huge effort just to do the find, sort, test and pack and I've not had time to invest in sourcing additional games or content.

One of the more interesting requirements is that once setup everything needs to have a "test and tag" electrical test by the venues Sparkies which will be interesting.Need to get several systems with UK plugs rapidly rewired and 220v->110v stepdowns may be an issue.

YetiSeti wrote:Do you have much VR gear? I had a VFX1 Virtual Reality Headgear just arrive the other week ( https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/1006 ... 1924263345 )It would be great to see the older VR tech on show. I reckon there would be as much interest for people to try an original one and then the new Oculus Rift just for comparison and to really put the newer technology into context. I think I'll watch The Lawnmower Man again before the next weekend. I see it's up on youtube.T

I do have a VFX1 myself and several other shutter glass systems - pics.

Just a quick post to say thanks for presenting such a HUGE collection of classic machines! Was very impressed just how broad the collection was - and a lot of lost memories there... Playing Malzak in a dairy in Kawakawa on the way home from a Saturday morning soccer match. A couple of the kids at school had many of the LED-based games (like Munchman) that their parents would bring back from trips overseas to Fiji and Australia and they'd bring them to school. And of course all my childhood consoles and computers were there as expected...

Was also nice to talk with Mark Barlow and hear about the crowd-funded museum plan. Great idea, and definitely something I'd love to see come to fruition.

I *almost* missed the chance to pop up and view this - Each time I'd have a break from the stand downstairs, I'd come up and look at the looooong queue. So we waited til the event had died down and went up at 4:30 to be told that it was about to close, but luckily got in after saying we'd been waiting all day to come up. It was extremely popular (good to see so much interest) and lets hope that it gets some funding coming your way.

I'll definitely chuck something into the project - but it'll have to wait while we try to squeeze our Insurance company to pay for an Aborist that had to be called in on Wednesday morning when our rather *large* tree fell down over the next door driveway. Lovely side-effect of high speed winds and all...

I saw a bit of this on TV3 news last night. The clip also covered the old vintage gaming platforms (and retro-home computers). Great to see. For those that were there, did you get a feeling of what young people (<25 yrs) thought of the vintage hardware? Curious, astounded, dis-interested?

tezza wrote:I saw a bit of this on TV3 news last night. The clip also covered the old vintage gaming platforms (and retro-home computers). Great to see. For those that were there, did you get a feeling of what young people (<25 yrs) thought of the vintage hardware? Curious, astounded, dis-interested?

There were a few around us when we got up at the end of the day, but I saw a never ending stream of young kids all day from where I was working (the display was just straight up from our stand). The few who were around me were 20+ somethings. Some of them just knew 90's nintendo's upwards. One couple who looked like early 30-ish seemed to remember things right back to the 2600 (though they never looked old enough for that). Perhaps looks are decieving, or everybody just looks young these days.

I'd say that the fascination of computers and games they had never seen before was a big draw card to the crowd on the weekend (well, yesterday and today - which is still running).

I plonked a pile of piccies up on my FB page (a little grainy) but I've put them up on my dropbox as well for anybody wanting to look at my nonsense (a few snapshots of various stuff around, and a pile of the retro display)... Here's the link to the album...

Well done to you and Mark - very impressed with the setup AND the attendance. People climbing over themselves to get to the display. I went over the other side to the arcade machines and set highscores or Galaga and Digdug only to overhear a young kid afterward complain that he couldn't beat my score in Galaga because "Its hard and you only get 3 lives". I was laughing. That's how gaming used to be chap.

Was a huge weekend (actually 4 days as we setup Thursday and had a press only day on Friday) but had an overwhelmingly positive response to the Museum.We had 1000s of people come through the museum and many many people said it was there personal highlight of the show.

Got to meet all ages of people all passionate about gaming and computers, including lots of interesting people who were involved in selling early home computers in NZ.

The only downer about it was the long queues (at its worst we had a line of 50+ people waiting 40 minutes to see this stuff) and this was a side effect of what was in hind-site having it in too narrow a space.Any repeat this is the one thing that would need to be changed.

People seemed to be interested in it all but as each person went down the line (we had it set out chronologically (sort of) from oldest to newest) there was a point where there eyes lit up and they did the "We/I had one of those" and the nostalgia flooded back.

Was great meeting other collectors/historians - several of whom helped out - Marcus, Clinton, KevMan3d (briefly sorry!), John Pratt, Melanie etc.

Radar wrote:The only downer about it was the long queues (at its worst we had a line of 50+ people waiting 40 minutes to see this stuff) and this was a side effect of what was in hind-site having it in too narrow a space.Any repeat this is the one thing that would need to be changed.

Yup - having small breaks from our stand meant I couldn't afford to wait in those long lines, so I waited til 4:30 when it slowed right down - then there was a comment that it was all finished, and we'd waited all day to get there. Luckily we got in the last bunch of punters and saying "I've been waiting ALL DAY to come check this out" seemed to help.

Was great meeting other collectors/historians... KevMan3d (briefly sorry!)

That's cool - yeh, its a pity as I was hoping I could say "Hello" to a few names on this forum in person...

That said, I was also hoping to catch up with Melanie Swalwell as her academic research is in gaming, and in particular historical gaming technology. Steven Knightly mentioned I should network with her as she was always looking at the preservation aspect and was always interested in meeting people with similiar interests. I don't know how many people know of Steven, but he's the central hub of NZ game development and literally knows everybody involved in this countries game development industry. Nice guy.

EDIT: Melanie just emailed me - I've posted up on this forum info on the Flinders University "Play it again" project if you're interested in helping out with their database initiative.

But the museum is a fantastic idea. Definitely will follow its funding progress - I also see my tweets on the museum funding drive have been re-tweeted a few times now, which is very interesting given I don't know who those people who are re-tweeting are... People have obviously been stalking me.